Why is Passive Aggressive a bad thing?

[TM99]

30. It all comes down to anger

I have been working with a model of emotional energy recently inspired by my studies of Dobransky that I have found to be quite accurate and useful in my personal and clinical experience. It is rather simple too, which I like. I think it definitely addresses why passive aggressiveness is a bad thing.

There is positive emotion, which is pleasure (eustress) and ultimately self-esteem (the sense of well-being and confidence), and there is negative emotion, which is pain and ultimately distress. There are two varieties of distress in our environment, and they are loss and hurt. The more loss, the more anxiety. The more hurt, the more anger. As this discussion is about anger, I will only go on with the discussion of it from here.

Anger in and of itself is not bad. It is just a signal to tell me that there is hurt. The first thing I do when I find myself getting angry is to ask myself how am I hurting and why. Then I must recognize that there are two forms of hurting. One is the hurt that comes from without. It can be as small as a slight verbal insult or misunderstood communication attempt or as big as a physical attack. When it gets into me, then that hurt builds up and there is the anger signal.

The second hurt is the one from within. This triggers anger when I am not getting a need met. Unlike hurt from without, I am fully responsible for getting my own needs met and dealing with the hurt from within. I am not responsible for other's hurt toward me, however, I am responsible for how much I will tolerate and what my boundaries are around a particular individual. In a deep and intimate relationship, it may be very different than in a casual or work relationship. It will also depend upon what type of hurt I am experiencing.

So there is the hurt and up comes the anger. I have seen three ways then that this anger is expressed and dealt with. There is depression. There is aggression. There is assertiveness. Depression and aggression are always negative and useless. Assertiveness is always positive and useful. Since no one is yet perfect and this can take years to master, it is important for me to recognize that there can seem to be a fine line between aggression and assertiveness. It is easy to see when the line has been crossed if someone throws a punch for example. It is not as easy to see when words are used as even when I am being appropriately assertive, it may still cause hurt in another person. I can only take so much responsibility for that. In a friendship, the use of boundaries is really the best tool to ensure that positive assertiveness does not easily lead to negative aggression.

So to go further a bit with the above three. When I find myself depressed, I know that I am angry and therefore hurt. I also know that I have abdicated all responsibility for self-fulling my needs and have turned my anger inwards. I then ask myself what need is not being met, and then I make a concerted effort to then make the necessary changes to get that need met.

That first step is the conscious decision then to turn the anger around and express it outwardly. Here is where it can get tricky, and it takes much practice. I can express my anger assertively and it is constructive and positive. If I blow my top, I have expressed my anger aggressively, and it is destructive. If I yelled profanities or called someone names, I have crossed that line. Equally, if I use passive aggressiveness, I am being equally destructive. Telling all my friends about how someone hurt me instead of telling the person who actually hurt me, is neither useful nor constructive. It will not resolve my hurt or quell my anger. It is just as damaging as overt aggressiveness as it is still rage. It may appear more subtle but it is manipulative and just as inappropriate.

So what is assertiveness then? It is the ability to go out and get my needs met. I do this with the awareness that I want to minimize hurt to others. So when I am being assertive, I am patient and disciplined. If necessary, I will slow down so that my higher brain functions can over-ride the chemical storm in the more autonomic portions of my brain using such tools as breathing or silently counting three before responding in a verbal exchange.

So passive aggressiveness is just another form of rage or inappropriate anger in my professional opinion.